Liberal Lawyers' Group Says Bork Favored Business in Court Rulings

A liberal lawyers' group said today that a study of Judge Robert H. Bork's record contradicted his contention that he is a politically neutral practitioner of judicial restraint and showed pervasive bias for business and against individual rights claims.

A Justice Department spokesman dismissed the study, conducted by the Public Citizen Litigation Group, as being full of distortions. ''Through a variety of mathematical acrobatics, they lay out a record which simply doesn't accurately represent his record,'' said Patrick Korten, the spokesman.

The 149-page study is the most detailed examination made public of Judge Bork's votes in more than 400 cases and 144 signed opinions since he joined the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1982. President Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court July 1. Voting 'Against the Underdog'

The study focused especially on 50 cases in which Government actions were challenged either by individuals, workers or public interest groups on the one hand, or by business interests on the other hand, and in which Judge Bork disagreed with at least one other member of his court.

''The summary is that in 50 split cases, 96 percent of the time, that is, in 48 out of 50 cases, Judge Bork voted against the underdog,'' William B. Schultz, the lawyer who directed the study, said at a news conference today.

The report itself concluded: ''Where anybody but a business interest challenged executive action, Judge Bork exercised judicial restraint either by refusing to decide the case or by deferring to the executive on the merits.

''However, when business interests challenged executive action on statutory or constitutional grounds, Judge Bork was a judicial activist, favoring the business interest in every split decision in which he participated.'' 'Phony Statistical Portrait'

The lawyers' group, part of the Public Citizen interest group founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, is known both for advocacy of liberal causes and for the professional competence of its members. It is headed by Alan B. Morrison, a respected Supreme Court litigator.

Judge Bork declined to comment on the study. Mr. Korten said it presented ''a phony statistical portrait'' by ignoring the cases in which Judge Bork participated that were decided unanimously and by classifying as victories for business some cases that should not have been so listed.

He stressed that Judge Bork had voted in the majority in 94 percent of the cases he heard and that none of those decisions had been overturned by the Supreme Court.

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Mr. Korten also disputed the way the lawyers' group defined judicial restraint. The study defined it as the view that judges should defer to the actions of other branches of Government when there is a plausible legal basis for those actions. Mr. Korten asserted that judicial restraint meant deciding cases according to the law and that ''the Government's position has nothing to do with it.'' Bork on Religion Rulings

At today's news conference, Mr. Schultz said the cases in which at least one judge had dissented were the most relevant for purposes of assessing Judge Bork's record because the lack of unanimity indicated that they were relatively ''tough cases,'' with respectable arguments on each side, often involving controversial public issues. These are the types of cases that the Supreme Court is most likely to hear.

Also today, the Senate Judiciary Committee made public texts of speeches by Judge Bork in recent years in which he sharply criticized some Supreme Court rulings requiring strict separation of church and state.

In the texts, from 1984 and 1985, Judge Bork suggested that the Court had gone much too far in purging religion from public life, as the Reagan Administration has long argued.

Mr. Morrison said at the news conference that the report demonstrated that the portrayal of Judge Bork by the White House ''as a moderate, middle-of-the-road'' practitioner of judicial restraint'' was false. ''Our review shows that if you are looking for a moderate, you are not going to find one in Judge Bork,'' he said. Listing of Findings

Among the study's findings were these:

* In 28 nonunanimous cases against the executive branch not brought by business, Judge Bork voted in favor of the executive branch 26 times, consistently rejecting challenges to regulatory actions by public interest groups, requests by individuals and others for documents under the Freedom of Information Act and labor law claims by employees.

* In eight nonunanimous cases brought by business interests against Government agencies, including five challenges by regulated utilities to limitations on the rates they can charge consumers, ''Judge Bork voted for the business every time.''

* ''In the 14 split cases involving questions of access to the courts or to administrative agencies, Judge Bork voted against granting access on every occasion.'' In one case he found that the United States Senate and the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives both lacked legal standing to challenge an executive branch action, and in others he voted to dismiss on procedural grounds lawsuits by Haitian refugees, Americans who had been held hostage in Iran, homeless people, prison inmates, handicapped citizens and others.

''Judge Bork's performance on the D.C. circuit is not explained by the consistent application of judicial restraint or any other judicial philosophy,'' the report said. ''Instead, in split cases, one can predict his vote with almost complete accuracy simply by identifying the parties in the case.''

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A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 1987, on Page A00012 of the National edition with the headline: Liberal Lawyers' Group Says Bork Favored Business in Court Rulings. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe